Materials Science World Congress

Functional Materials are materials that have been designed and engineered to have special properties so that they can do something in particular in various applications. Functional materials differ from regular materials in the sense that while regular materials are usually selected for their mechanical or structural properties, functional materials are chosen because they react to some environmental stimuli or serve some purpose, such as electronics, energy, biomedical, etc.

One of the characteristics of functional materials is that their properties vary with external conditions, temperature and pressure, light, and magnetic fields. These might be shape memory alloys that when heated will restore to their original shape, or maybe piezoelectric materials that produce electrical current when mechanically stressed, or perhaps thermochromic materials that change color with a temperature change.

Functional materials are a big part of making energy storage devices such as batteries and supercapacitors and have the ability to enhance the efficiency and capacity of these. Other materials that are also being looked into for possible future energy storage purposes are lithium-ion conductors and solid-state electrolytes.

Functional materials have other major biomedical applications as well, including drug delivery systems tissue engineering, and medical implants. Like biodegradable polymers and bioactive glasses that are used for tissue scaffolding and are absorbed by the body as the tissue grows back.

Functional materials are also used in the electronics industry, semiconductors, sensors, and memory devices, without the properties of these materials being specifically tailored for these uses, the performance of these devices would not be as good nor as energy efficient.

And functional materials are the way to go with industries moving towards smart technologies that can be used in so many fields wearable devices, robotics, and advanced manufacturing. They are critical to the evolution of new, interactive, malleable, and useful applications.